Or, The Sovereign & Property, Part 2 of 3
I mentioned I’ve been watching Downton Abbey and it has been an interesting peek into the world of turn-of-the-century British Aristocrats. In the early episodes there was a lot of talk about the “house” or the “estate” and the nearby town but it took me a while to realize that the main family were politicians. To be an Earl is a sufficiently foreign concept to me that it is meaningless, but I know what it is to be a Mayor. The patriarch of the family in the TV Show is the Mayor of a town, and when he dies his heir will be the Mayor. He didn’t choose that life but he has that life and he must rise to the occasion for the good of the residents of the town over which he is Mayor.
The premise here is that in order to be a good Mayor he has to take his responsibilities seriously, and in order to ensure that he remains a good Mayor he has to make sure his kids understand the responsibilities and are capable of taking them seriously, too. The order of precedence is something like this: His kids must understand how to take care of themselves, how to take care of their family, how to take care of their subjects, how to take care of their community, how to take care of the state. More or less in that order.
In Part 1, I talked about how subjection is a higher order of authority than ownership, for both Sovereign and Subject. This means that it is a higher responsibility, even to be a subject. To put it this way, a subject of the Mayor has this order of precedence: They must understand how to take care of themselves, how to take care of their family, what duties are owed to their sovereign, how to take care of their community, how to take care of the state. Because they have no subjects themselves, they must be good subjects to the sovereign.
Implicit in the relationship between Sovereign and subject is a custodial relationship. The Sovereign must care for the needs of the subject, the subject must entrust themselves to the care of the Sovereign. These are lessons we don’t need an aristocracy to teach: teaching kids to be good subjects while simultaneously demonstrating being a good sovereign is important. It’s a fun-sized aristocracy you can enjoy at home, caring for your home the way a Mayor or Earl might care for a city or demesne.
An important part of all this which was mentioned in the previous article but is worth repeating: As subject, ones property must be disposed to the good of the Sovereign, or at least to the good of the order of precedence discussed earlier. Again, if we assume money is the delegated authority of the sovereign to make exchanges to provide necessities, then accumulating money is wasteful and the accumulation of luxury is disordered because it uses the sovereign authority to provide more than necessities and fails to provide for ones community or to return what is not needed back to the sovereign.
This is why wealth is a stumbling block to faith: luxurious wealth represents pride, usurping the authority of the sovereign to gives oneself the accidents of sovereignty. If we fully entrust ourselves to the care of the sovereign, accumulating excess is a failure in trust that the sovereign will provide.
This is why sacrificial giving is extremely important. Remind yourself that what you have is not yours, and you owe a duty to those around you.
AMDG
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 